


Entente

by EnglishLanguage



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Uprising
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Emotional Constipation, Gen, Injury Recovery, Panic Attack, Scars, Tron is a Dad Friend, Tron tries to talk about his feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishLanguage/pseuds/EnglishLanguage
Summary: A mission goes awry; Tron deals with the emotional fallout.(Sequel to About-face)
Relationships: Beck & Tron (Tron)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 59





	Entente

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QuimeraTheTraveler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuimeraTheTraveler/gifts).



> This is the sequel to About-face. Seeing as this fic starts out with a couple of vague time skips, it'll be especially hard to follow without reading the previous story.

Tron knows he had a reputation, once.

Strict, stubborn, taciturn. 

Vicious, too--walking a strange and narrow line between ‘protective’ and ‘brutal’ that, in the eyes of many, rendered him incapable of truly caring for any one program.

(It’s the same line that separates a hero from a traitor. It’s the same line that Clu exists on, the difference between them being that Clu embraced the territory, understood it, and tipped the line in his favor.)

* * *

In Beck’s eyes, Tron keeps his reputation for the entirety of a centicycle before the mechanic either forgets it or brushes it off, steps over it neatly.

It’s all Tesler’s fault.

The general miscalculates, running reckless on some electrical surge of paranoia, and sends half of his sentries on a hunt for the Renegade in Purgos. It would be a shrewd decision--there’s no better place to find anarchists, separatists, programs capable of constructing high explosives from junk code--except that it isn’t. As criminals go, Beck is an anomaly; he's too innocent, righteous, _wary_ of losing his disk to willingly associate with Purgos.

It’s a waste of the Occupation’s military.

It leaves Beck overconfident. 

Overconfident, but undertrained. Tron watches the beta brace himself for the mission, fidgeting with his disk like he’s playing an offhand tournament, and not handling a weapon with full deresolution privileges. Beck lets ambition swell up inside him, bounces on his toes (mind and body too high off the ground; he’ll get knocked off his feet in a _nanocyc_ ), and activates his lightcycle with a running leap.

It isn’t that Beck isn’t cunning enough to take advantage of the absence of martial force in Argon. On the contrary, the mechanic targets the transport systems, disabling a dozen trains and effectively stalling the Games, without running into a single opponent.

It’s the pressure of completing a high-intensity mission that will catch Beck off guard, tear him down.

Tron sees it coming from megabytes away. Beck…

Beck doesn’t. 

With an exhilarated grin, the beta finally limps into Tron’s headquarters and drapes himself over the furniture, halfway to lank and halfway quivering with stiff terror.

“I can’t believe I did that.”

Compared to the explosion of Clu’s statue, Beck’s latest accomplishment is nothing, but Tron shifts the observation to the back of his processes, choosing not to mention it. Instead, he approaches Beck at a careful diagonal, notes, “you’re running your power cycles too fast.”

“I- Really?” A tightly coiled shudder ripples across Beck’s shoulders, corkscrews down the length of his back and into each arm. “I’m fine. I’ll get over it,” he tries, spits each word out in soft, shallow huffs. His circuits flicker, stabbed through with white-harsh, acidic light. Tron can nearly detect the scent of overcharged ozone.

“You're fine?”

“Yeah.” 

(No. Panic is never that simple. Tron still _twitches_ when something flashes red. Still curls into himself, trembles, when everything around him stays quiet for too long, scorching him with the caustic fear of a disaster that never comes.)

“Stand up,” Tron orders, and waits, glaring, until Beck obeys, peeling himself off of the back of Tron’s couch.

“Whoa-” the mechanic sways, blinks- “‘s all spinning-”

Tron steps around the couch, slipping a hand into Beck’s armpit, catching him. The Renegade’s white armor is already missing, deactivated, and the material of Beck’s gridsuit slides, sleek and thin, against Tron’s fingers, scanning as a liability. As exposure. As an easy opening with which a program could catch a disk against the underside of Beck’s shoulder, shattering unprotected voxels.

A familiar lecture nags at Tron’s processors, and every word of it is a conflagration, a dead-cold morass of concern sublimated into anger. 

_If you dislike your armor so much, Renegade, why don’t you bring me on your next assignment? I make an_ adequate _shield._

Right now, Beck can’t handle Tron’s frustration. Biting his cheek, Tron files away the lecture for later, marks it ‘high priority.’

Unsteady, knees already buckling, Beck is easy to maneuver; Tron neatly steps into Beck’s space, lets him trip over Tron’s feet, and follows the mechanic on his rapid downward path to the floor. “You’re exhausted,” he lectures, roughly pushing Beck’s head down between his knees. The beta grunts, nearly keels over on his side, and Tron loosens his grip. “Give yourself time to recalibrate, Beck.”

_“Users.”_

“Yes, Users,” Tron grits out, irritation scorching a dark hollow into his chest. “You wanted to ‘get over’ this on your own?”

One of Beck’s hands scrapes across the floor, finds Tron’s boot, and curls around it. “Guess not,” he says, surprisingly coherent, though his voice wobbles. “Figured… it wasn’t a huge problem. If it was, you’d help.”

And the fire in Tron’s chest mutates. It coalesces into the white-hot edge of a disk, digs into his circuits and _twists._

He shakes his head. His emotions are irrelevant. Not a concern of Beck’s.

“It’s ironic that you targeted the trains-” by which he means Beck has Bits for processors- “seeing as you work as a mechanic. You’ll personally undo everything you destroyed this last millicycle.” 

“Good. I don’t like destroying things. Other programs need those trains.” Beck chokes on a sharp gasp, clenches fingers against Tron’s foot. “Not just Tesler.” 

“You’d make a terrible soldier.” _You’re an excellent mechanic._

_You create._

_You remind me of Flynn, of Yori, of Alan_One._

Tron’s choice of words isn’t tactful--he recognizes it as they slip off his tongue--and he winces, functions locking up along his shoulders in sharp protest.

Beck only tilts his head to the side, his eyes hazy with agitation thickening into slow fatigue. A smile pushes at the corners of his mouth. “Hey. Thanks.” 

Tron _startles;_ his hand spasms against the base of Beck’s skull. 

Beck hisses, nearly laughs, but the sound bleeds out of him weak and shaky. “I hear you,” he mumbles, poking Tron’s shin. “Don’t worry.”

* * *

“Users, Tron,” Beck sighs, brushing a palm over Tron’s shoulder. (He’s always touching, always stumbling into Tron, never cautious, never too respectful.) “Able tried to explain you to me, but I don’t think he understands you at all.”

* * *

It’s useful that Able _knows._

Now, Tron can keep an eye on the Renegade, and Able can keep an eye on the mechanic. _Now,_ Able can contact Tron, impatient and suspicious as ever, and bite out a sharp “Beck needs you.”

“Where?”

“Garage. He’s moping--do something.”

Tron struggles to his feet, lets dull agony drain from his core, down his circuits. The new code regenerated across his body still stings, registers wet and raw in his self-repair scans, doesn’t sync with the damaged voxels lining half-healed wounds. There’s lag weighing down his left arm. His older scars _ache._ He needs to recharge, debug his code, and stop exerting himself.

And he needs to help Beck.

“I’ll be there,” he informs Able, and closes his eyes, saturates himself in dark apathy, until pain no longer bleeds ragged through his voice. “Is he injured?”

“No.”

 _Good._ Tron patched Beck’s fractures before sending the mechanic away, needing to fix his own wounds (and regenerate 26% of his code) in privacy. If Beck managed to find trouble somewhere between the Outlands and Able’s Garage, it would be unbelievable.

It would be… Beck. 

“Understood.” Deactivating the call, Tron runs diagnostics, checks his range of motion, stretching his arms over his head. Patched voxels, still stained transparent blue, catch against each other; his left arm, from elbow down, burns with an influx of error warnings. Lag has decreased to 1.4 attocycles at his wrist, 0.3 attocycles at his shoulder.

He can draw his disk.

It’s enough.

Tron is accustomed to working through pain. He can access multiple memory files stained bitter with the recollection of what it is to shut off his vocal functions, disguising his thoughts, through pulsing agony, the heat of liquid energy pooling in his armor, the sting of Flynn’s disappointment (“I mean, I _hoped_ we’d have all the Gridbugs cleared out by today...”).

His baton sits on a table, half hanging off the edge, where Beck haphazardly deposited it, both hands occupied with managing Tron’s weight. Hooking it to his hip, Tron rolls his shoulders back, mentally _reaches_ for the subroutine in his disk that activates his blackout armor. Another request for recharge ignites, drags through his circuits, and Tron shoves it aside.

Beck first. Tron’s code is resilient, well-written, and will hold him on his feet until he returns from Argon.

* * *

Beck makes _nothing_ simple. The Garage is crowded, congested with beta mechanics stepping on each other’s toes, crawling over Occupation tanks, almost blind to the sharp, scarlet circuits that would make any other program shy away. There’s no way to walk through the chaos without being noticed.

Tron ducks his helmet, holds himself flat against the seat of his lightcycle, and nudges the vehicle around the corner of the building. His scans on the building return bloated with data--dimensions, entry and exit reports--on removable panels lining the roof.

Ventilation?

 _Affirmative._

Easy for reconnaissance.

Tron logs the information as a security risk; Beck, if not Able, would appreciate a warning. Again storing his lightcycle against his hip, he takes the jump onto the wall at a run (1.1 attocycs of lag, now) and catches onto a ledge. 

The pain swells; Tron releases it in a low hiss, drowns it under a blur of fatigue as he climbs. 

He keeps a firm grasp on Beck’s digital signature--mere millicycles ago, the mechanic walked over this section of roof, crawled through a panel to Tron’s left, leaving an echo of footprints. Tron follows the trail, dropping into a dark hallway. 

_One program detected in specified radius._

Tron deactivates the security subroutine, waits until the constant data streaming into his circuits stalls and dissipates. He knocks on Beck’s door.

“Fraggit, Mara, if it’s you-”

The door opens, and Beck’s face… glitches.

Hidden behind Tron’s visor, his lips twitch with fleeting amusement. “Beck,” he greets, and the word drags coarse out of the modifier in his helmet.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Beck insists.

“That’s funny. Able told me something different.”

“Able told you-” Frustration ripples over Beck’s features, creases the beta’s mouth into a narrow line, flickers dark in averted eyes. “I didn’t know Able could talk to you.”

“No,” Tron agrees, folding his arms behind his back. Hides the intermittent spasms in his left hand. “You didn’t.”

With a sigh--underneath the frustration, a blunt and heavy _something_ carries in Beck’s voice, weighs down on his shoulders--Beck shifts to the side, quirking a careless hand at Tron. _Come in._ “And you decided that wasn’t something I needed to know?”

Tron steps inside, easing the door shut behind him. “Correct.” Tilting his head to the side, Tron surveys Beck’s room, doesn’t bother hiding his scrutiny. He _can’t_ hide it, not easily; he’s running half-blind, too drained to keep up the artificial subroutines patching the scars on his face, and has to blatantly turn his head to see. Pieces of scrap metal, all jagged edges, pocked with Gridbug bites, decorate the length of Beck’s bunk and cover the floor. If Beck were any other program, Tron would call it a clumsy attempt at a defense system. 

And he identifies three of his own batons, each flagged with damage reports.

“Let me rephrase,” Beck tries, mulish, “you shouldn’t be here; it's _dangerous._ You aren’t expendable, Tron.”

Tron huffs. “Am I not?” Beck raises his eyebrows, radiating startled disbelief, and Tron shakes his head. “Isn’t that what I’m training you for, Renegade?” 

He needs a successor.

He needs a program who isn’t maimed, corrupted, unable to maintain his strength in combat. He needs a program who isn’t burned out and broken, a program capable of hope.

A program without a _reputation._

“Sit down,” Beck requests--the words come out skewed, strangled. 

Acquiescing, Tron drops onto the edge of Beck’s bunk; a wound, carved deep into his torso, twists, pumping staggered waves of pain through his circuitry. The ache flashes, like grey static, through his vision, and leaks down his throat. Gathers, tangles, in his chest. Scalds.

 _Alan_One,_ it hurts.

Pulling a frown, Beck leans back against his door. “How am I not expendable? I can’t even fight.”

“Beck-” Tron shuts his mouth, stifles a stiff grunt. 

“That virus,” the mechanic states, vehement, laying out the words with dark finality. “I got distracted, nervous, let it get the drop on me. You pushed me away and-” Beck’s hand shakes as he brings it to his forehead, hiding his eyes. “You shielded me,” he decides, nodding. “Then what?”

“It bit me,” Tron simplifies, because Beck doesn’t need to know about the pain, the sudden terror. It bit his arm, hastily thrown up to protect his face, puncturing through layers of armor and code. It jerked its head to the side, tearing voxels apart, and… “It self-destructed.”

“Violently,” Beck adds. 

“Your memory files aren’t fully repaired,” Tron notes, concerned. Defiant, Beck tries to meet Tron’s gaze through his helmet, misses by a few pixels. “If that doesn’t improve within the millicycle, I want you to go find a medic.” And because Beck always tries to fight back: “That’s an order, program.”

“Not the point. You-” Beck waves a hand at Tron’s body, his face contorted, ugly- “are far worse off than I am. Because I was too _stupid_ to hold my own in combat.”

It’s confidence, Tron realizes. Or a lack of it. Vulnerability, soft and deeply bruised, is poorly disguised beneath the sullen anger in Beck’s mannerisms. 

Tentative, Tron hesitates, gathers together the shards of his worry, tries to reassure. “You should trust yourself, Beck.”

 _“Why?”_ The mechanic’s voice cracks. 

There’s a new ache, now, rooted deep inside Tron's chest: something raw and unsteady, overheated. “Because I trained you. You know I don’t indulge your mistakes.”

Beck almost laughs.

“You’re intelligent. Perceptive, quick on your feet, versatile. And you care,” Tron emphasizes, “about the Grid. About the programs on it.”

The beta, infuriatingly, looks away, latching onto the comment that started the argument. “Whatever. You’re not expendable. By the Users, Tron, you survive everything. You- You’re meant to be invincible.” 

_You’re supposed to be better than me._

_I’m not ready to do this alone._

_You scared me._

Entire sentences, discussions, unvoiced fears--there’s a darkness tucked away in this mess of an exhausted argument, and in what Beck refuses to say. Tron can only swallow back a weary sigh and guess at what his apprentice won't tell him.

He can only reach up behind his neck, shoulder grating in its joint, and derez his helmet. “Do I look invincible to you?”

Beck sucks in a tense breath.

Tron knows what his scars look like. How they swarm up his throat and face, rough and serrated, in patches of dead and discolored voxels. How they hold stiff, refusing to move with the rest of his face. How his eye, when the patches deteriorate beyond 50% functionality, is frozen, sightless, clouded over with viscous grey.

“I know you’re not really invincible,” Beck whispers. “I just…”

He just needs to realize he isn’t alone. The Renegade tries his hardest, and it’s enough.

“You need your healing chamber, Tron.”

He does. He’s running out of time and energy at an alarming speed; Tron can acknowledge his weakness in front of Beck, but he won’t collapse in hard shutdown on the beta’s bunk. “I’ll go if you stop ‘moping,’ Beck,” he negotiates. "Per Able's request." This time, Tron can’t hide the smile that settles, stilted, over his mouth as Beck rolls his eyes, nods. 

The pain, when he stands, is less; the fatigue, far worse. He manually re-rezzes his helmet, conserving energy, as he walks to the door and opens it.

“Tron?”

Tron pauses.

“I was scared,” Beck admits softly. “Do you get as scared for me as I do for you?”

Tron’s circuitry freezes. “Yes.” 

_Always._

He closes the door behind him.

* * *

“You said,” Beck asserts, raising his chin, “that you don’t indulge my weaknesses.”

“I don’t.” Tron extends a hand to his apprentice, pulling him off the floor, scanning for fractures sustained during their sparring. 

“Right.” The beta nods, eyes narrowed with determination. “So you'll teach me how to fight viruses?”

“Of course.”

  
  



End file.
